David Stidston
Bio
My name is David Stidston, and I am a single father to my 8-year-old daughter Mia. We live in the beautiful city of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia. I am currently self-employed, working as a freelancer and casually in market research.
Stories (216)
Filter by community
Friday Quote Of The Day (A Change For The Better)
You can run, you can hide, and you can try and escape, but there's something you will never be able to avoid, and that is change. Even if you decided to live your life in an isolated cave, away from civilization, you still wouldn't be able to avoid change, because as you continue to age, even your own body is not exempt from change. Change is just a natural aspect of life, and as much as many of us don't like things to change, or like change at all, it is inevitable. For those who dislike change, they will often find that change is imposed on them anyway, leaving them with no other choice in the end but to accept it. There's no disputing that some changes are not beneficial, convenient, helpful, or in any way impressive, but like anything in life, there will always be some successes and some failures. We need to dismiss the belief from our mind that change is not a good thing, as after all, without change, there is no growth, and without growth, there is no success. If we resist change, we are simply going to be left behind in life. I think it's funny the number of people who are introduced to something new and different, and they are totally against it, they are not at all interested in it, they refuse to embrace it, and they don't want to even trial it, but then comes a day when they do actually try it for themselves, or they have no other choice but to try it out, and they end up discovering that it is actually fantastic after all. They realize that they didn't know what they were missing out on. We are creatures of habit, we love to be in control, we love to feel knowledgeable, and we live by a certain routine we create for ourselves, so when we face the prospect of change, we can become very hesitant and resistant to it. Why? Because change draws us out of our comfort zone, and we don't like that. It's that feeling we are relinquishing the control, knowledge, and routine, we are so accustomed to.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
Thursday Quote Of The Day (Problematic People Pleaser)
In a perfect world, I think we would all find happiness and satisfaction in being liked, admired, respected, and loved, by others. Each decision we make, and action we take, would be appreciated by everyone. We would have no enemies, no one would dislike us, and no one would criticize or ridicule us. There's just two issues here though; one, we do not live in a perfect world, and two, so many people act and think like we actually do live in a perfect world. The sad, yet harsh, truth is that we will never be able to please everyone, and have everybody like, respect, admire, and love us. The human race is unfortunately a very judgmental and opinionated species, and people will always seek about uncovering and exposing any flaws and faults that we have, to showcase us in a bad light, no matter how insignificant it may be. They will even manufacture some flaws and faults about us, if they are unable to find anything worth showcasing and exposing to the world. So many people are so bitter and frustrated with their own life that they have to degrade and defame others, in order to make themselves feel good. They witness certain other individuals who have created likeability, popularity, respect, and admiration, from others, and because they don't attract that same attraction themselves, they don't believe anyone else should deserve that either. They therefore go about spreading rumors, or finding faults and flaws with these individuals, in an attempt to drag them down, and eliminate their success and happiness in the process. Why are people like this? I don't have the answer to that, other than it being generated from pure jealousy, but in all honesty, it's pathetic! Each and every one of us should delight in the success, happiness, and prosperity, of others, just as much as we do for ourselves. Jealousy is a negative emotion, and if we choose to feel envious of others, this will only lead to bitterness, and then unhappiness.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
Wednesday Quote Of The Day (Make Time For Exercise)
Yesterday I mentioned that 7 to 9 hours sleep should be a non-negotiable, when it comes to being included in our daily schedule. It's imperative for our health that we are allowing our body the opportunity to have ample rest, so as to fully recharge in order for us to be more productive and efficient, plus of course it's necessary to help fight against various illnesses. There's another non-negotiable activity that should always be on our daily schedule also, and that is exercise. Like sleep however, exercise is another one of those activities that so many people do not see it's huge importance, and therefore they sacrifice it from their daily schedule, mainly as a result of excess work or pure laziness. Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to the body's tissues, helping our cardiovascular system to operate more efficiently. Not only that, but it of course helps build muscle, and enhances our endurance and energy levels. In fact, when it comes to exercise, the list of positives is long, with other benefits being that it makes us happier, it helps us reduce excess body weight, it increases bone strength, it reduces the risk of chronic disease, it improves our memory, it contributes to better sleep quality, it can reduce pain, and yes, it can even enhance our sex life. It's a stark contrast to all the effects we incur by not exercising, which include increased weight gain & obesity, a decreased metabolism, an increase of stress levels, a higher risk of stress and anxiety, a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, a higher risk of various cancers, frequent lethargy, physical weakness, and muscle and bone weakness. It's a no brainer really that we should therefore be making exercise a priority on our daily to do list, but why do so many of us fail to do so?
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Remind You Of The Importance Of Self-Love
What is the difference between self-love and vanity? Well, self-love is defined as having "regard for one's own well-being and happiness", whilst vanity is defined as having "excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements". When we talk about loving ourselves, many people often get caught up in the belief they are being vain, if they choose to love themselves, which often can lead to unwanted attention and criticism. As you can see from the definitions above though, there is a distinct difference between self-love and vanity. There are two words in the above definitions that I want to highlight, them being "excessive" and "regard". Vanity is indeed taking the love for oneself to excessive and unnecessary levels, as it's placing ourselves on a pedestal basically, installing a belief within ourselves that we are above and better than others, without showing any humility in the process. We may be blessed with good looks, or we may be blessed with skills and talent that earns us success and recognition in a respective field, but we should never be so infatuated and obsessed with ourselves to the extent we believe we are above others. Whether you believe it or not, vanity actually leads us to becoming restricted in our experience of life. We are so focused on being so awesome, attractive, and talented, that we target being the centre of attention, but all the while, it ends up creating solitude and emptiness instead. Being so self-absorbed, we often start to disconnect from others, which can have a detrimental affect on our relationships. Vanity is not beneficial to us, and is not what loving ourselves is all about.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Encourage You To Seize Your Opportunities
It's been stated that opportunity knocks, but if that were actually the truth, then the majority of people worldwide need to get their hearing tested because they fail to answer the door. Either that, or people need a massive injection of willpower and courage to seize the opportunities when they hear and recognize the knocking. Each and every day, people everywhere continue to moan and groan, and whinge and complain, about how their life sucks, how they are always unhappy, how they never get their way in life, how life is so unfair to them, how they never have enough money, how their job is crappy, and how they never get to experience success and goal accomplishment. It's that typical blame game that so many people love to play, because they genuinely believe that it's life's fault, or it's just their circumstances, or it's other people's fault, as to why their life is miserable, unsatisfying, unrewarding, and unfulfilling. All along, the truth is, we only ever have ourselves to blame for all what we whinge and complain about, because it comes off the back of decisions, or non-decisions, that we make that actually determines our circumstances. It's also about our attitude, and how we choose to perceive the circumstances we found ourselves in, and how life really is. Life can be harsh, there's no disputing that, because on many occasions we are left to confront situations and events that are unfair, unjust, and even unexplainable, but the majority of things we complain and whinge about are purely from choices we make, not as a result of life being harsh on us. The reason being is, we fail to seize our opportunities! We have opportunities that stare us in the face, every single day, to transform our life and start creating success and happiness for ourselves, yet we direct our attention away from them, and we do so because we are either too scared or too lazy to accept them.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Inspire You To Be More Resilient
Resilience is having the mental strength to recover quickly from difficulties, adversities, failures, challenges, rejections, and setbacks. Without it, we cannot expect to go on and succeed in the pursuit of our goals. Why is that? Simple, because difficulties, adversities, failures, challenges, rejections, and setbacks, are all part of the journey towards success. Only on extremely rare occasions do people ever achieve success without first having to endure all these above trials, therefore, we should always prepare ourselves to face these adversities. Not only should we prepare to face these adversities and trials, but we also should prepare ourselves mentally to accept them, acknowledge them, embrace them, and then work hard to overcome them. These trials and adversities aren't just a once off though, and then we succeed, not normally anyway. In fact, we will continue to encounter them over and over again, for many years even, before we finally break through and find that specific action that opens the door to success. These adversities and trials are brutal, and they will challenge us to the point where our pursuit looks hopeless, and near impossible to achieve, and that is why resilience is so important. We need to draw on our mental strength to uplift us, and fuel the determination, drive, perseverance, patience, and belief, within us, to keep on going, no matter the cost, and no matter the suffering. Of course it's difficult to accept and endure, but unfortunately for us, that's how life goes. In order to enjoy the rewards and blessings that life has to offer, we have to work extremely hard, and experience all kinds of hardship and pain first. Despite how stressful, painful, and challenging, these adversities, hardships, failures, setbacks, rejections, and trials are, there is an upside. These positives can be summed up in three words; experience, learning, and growth.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Encourage You To Meditate Daily
I never really used to understand the purpose and concept of meditation. Sitting down with your legs crossed, your back upright, arms outstretched, and palms facing upwards, whilst having your eyes closed, as you remain completely idle in silence, I always just thought it was some waste of time activity for yoga fanatics. Funny thing is, I never really knew what yoga even was about either. Even if I was educated more on meditation and yoga, going back 5, 10, and even 20 years ago, I still wouldn't have been enticed by it, or interested in it. I never really saw any benefit to it, and just the thought of sitting there in such a position, pausing from the mayhem and chaos of everyday life, just to have a few moments of silence, reflection, and understanding, was not my idea of being proactive or productive. I've always been someone who just has to be doing something, apart from when I'm asleep of course, because otherwise it feels like time wasted. Having become someone who has begun to learn the importance of the mind, over these past four years, and the crucial role it plays in regards to our attitude, our behavior, our decision making, our emotions, our outlook, our wellbeing, and even the results we obtain in our life, meditation has finally started to make complete sense to me. It's like anything in life really that, as humans, we tend to form our own perspective, opinion, and belief, about someone or something, even though we don't really know the truth about it or them. I drew a picture in my mind about what meditation was, and without actually knowing about what it entailed, what its benefits were, and why we should practice it daily, I automatically judged it as being a waste of time. Nowadays, I've become an advocate for it.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Longevity
20 Quotes To Help You Become More Grateful
One of the main reasons behind why so many people are unhappy, miserable, depressed, and unsatisfied, is because they have a constant focus on all the things they don't have in life, that they really desperately want. From more money, to nicer furniture, to a nicer house, to a nicer car, to a better job, to more modern assets and gadgets, you name it, most people will always choose to focus on being underprivileged and hard done by from what they don't have in life. What they do have is simply not good enough, in their mind anyway. Only a few years ago, I was one of these people. I would be constantly moaning and groaning about how other people were so lucky to have the house, the car, the assets, the furniture, and the other luxuries they had in life, whilst I had to settle for everything average. I am glad I have changed from being that type of person. It's that glass half full versus glass half empty scenario, and I always saw things from a glass half empty perspective. If I didn't have that glass full, I wasn't happy, nor was I at all satisfied. Since we are talking about glasses here, have you ever paid for a drink at a restaurant or bar, and upon receiving it, you note that the person who served it has filled it nowhere near the top? You really full dudded and disappointed because you've paid good money for that drink, only to have the glass filled barely halfway. Naturally we are going to feel that way if we set the expectations that we would receive a full glass. It's funny though that there's no sign anywhere saying that glasses will be filled to a certain level, we just assume and expect that they will be filled close to the top. We focus completely on what we didn't receive, rather than what we did. We forget the fact that someone is taking the time to serve us, the fact that we are privileged enough to even be able to afford the drink in the first place, and the fact that we are blessed to even have that drink at all, considering many people around the world would be overwhelmed with appreciation to have that drink themselves.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Help Us Exercise Patience In Achieving Our Goals
Over the past few decades, as a whole, humankind has sadly become more and more impatient. As much as the world continues to evolve off the back of technological advancements, and unfortunately also a desperate hunger for profits, it has led us into a far more fast paced, stressful, and demanding breed of lifestyle. With the constant deadlines to meet, and commitments to honor, time has never been so valuable as it is now. As we find ourselves struggling to balance our work with our home life, every minute has become like gold dust. Because of that build up of stress and pressure of meeting our obligations, the last thing we want to deal with is having to wait for something. That ongoing stress and pressure leads us to anxiety and frustration, and unfortunately, we often take it out on others. If we have to wait in line at the shops, at a bank, at an eatery, at a petrol station, at traffic lights, wherever it may be, if we lose precious minutes waiting for something in which we set the expectations of not having to wait, we get cranky. As I said, unfortunately it's those who are serving, or even other customers, who will quite often cop the release of our frustration. We have sadly grown to become more and more impatient, and again, that stems from the expectations we set.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Fuel Your Determination To Achieve Your Goals
How many times in your life have you made the decision to do or complete something, perhaps made a commitment to yourself or someone else that you would indeed fulfil this particular obligation, only to quit or withdraw from doing so? Maybe this particular task, action, or assignment was just too difficult, tedious, or unsatisfying, and you just didn't want to commit yourself to it? Myself, I think back to when I got accepted into a university course, following the completion of my secondary school education. Personally, the last thing I felt like doing was getting stuck into more study and homework, so it wasn't exactly something that excited me, but because Mum and Dad were so proud of me, I felt an obligation to do this particular university course. Only just a few months into the course though, I pulled out of it. I wasn't passionate about it whatsoever, and I instead took aim at finding a job. Mum and Dad were really cut up about my choice, and I really felt like I let them down, but I didn't have that drive or determination to keep doing something I wasn't enjoying, nor did I believe it was leading me to something I genuinely wanted to do in the future. It's these sort of stories that really highlight the fact that unless we have a genuine passion for doing something, and have a goal that we are truly desperate to achieve, to which we would pretty much do anything in order to achieve it, we will never be fully committed and determined to accomplish it. There's a complete absence of motivation and drive, nothing which keeps us accountable to achieve it. Even in keeping on with the journey, our application level would be extremely low in comparison to the potential we would reveal if we were striving for something we are truly passionate about.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Inspire You On A Monday
What is it about Monday that so many people hate and dread? It's a question you really don't have to think too hard about to discover the answer. In one word, it's work. Monday signals the start of another working week, and when our eyes open to the sound of our alarm ringing on a Monday morning, that dreaded thought of having five full days of work in front of us, before we reach another weekend, when we can next do something enjoyable, and feel a burst of happiness once again, leaves us feeling completely demotivated and dejected. It's bad enough being woken from what was a pleasant sleep, even if it was far from an adequate amount however, then have to pry ourselves out of bed at some ungodly hour, only to get up, rush to get ready, battle through a sea of horrific peak hour traffic, and endure 8 hours, or even more, of having to do something we don't even enjoy doing. It's not much comfort knowing that we have to then battle through more horrific peak hour traffic on our return home, before we finally get to enjoy a few hours relaxing with our partner and/or family, only to then face the prospect of another four days of this same crappy lifestyle until the weekend again. That's why Monday sucks the most, because it's the furthest day away from the weekend. Five days of suffering before we can be happy again. Is it true also that the traffic is always at its worst on a Monday, and our customers and workmates are at their grumpiest, or is it just this perceived reality we create for ourselves? One thing is for certain though, the majority of people who work a Monday to Friday job or business, and dislikes the work they do, unanimously would vote Monday as their most hated day of the week.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Motivation
20 Quotes To Help You Repel Negative Influences
Negativity is all around us! Sadly, it's just something we cannot run and escape from because so many people choose to live their life operating from a negative mindset. When we arrive at our workplace each day, there are those workmates who are continuously complaining, whinging, and gossiping. When we hop on social media and the internet, there are those millions of people who love to air their negative thoughts and opinions to the world, slandering and criticizing others, constantly using these online platforms to relieve themselves of the anger and frustration that dominates their life, due to their starvation of happiness and success. When we are out with our friends, there are always those who will take the opportunity to complain about all what they don't have in life, how they believe they are a victim of their circumstances, and to gossip about others. Even when we are within the four walls of our own house, it may be our partner, our parents, our siblings, or our housemates, who are constantly moody, and who are always complaining about something. Perhaps, maybe it's you who is always complaining, whinging, gossiping, being pessimistic, being negative minded, being opinionated, and grizzling about your circumstances? As much as we may feel that it relieves us of the anger and frustrations, by whinging, sharing our opinions, and criticizing others, on social media, as much as we feel compelled to gossip about others for conversation's sake, and as much as we feel the need to release that tension of circumstances and results not going our way in life, we are only contributing to our own destruction in doing so. Negativity only ever leads us to living a negative life with continual negative results. At the end of the day, the difference between living a life filled with positivity or negativity completely rests with us. It's us personally who make the choice.
By David Stidston5 years ago in Humans
